Aimee Liu
Author Interview - Aimee Liu
Author I draw inspiration from: I seem to have favorite authors by the decade. This decade’s idol is Michael Ondaatje, whose lyrical language, penchant for transforming arcane research into art, and piercingly intelligent characters all send me into a swoon. I also identify with him because of his multi-national identity and allegiances. He was raised in Sri Lanka and England, lives in Canada, and has forebears of a variety of ethnicities. As the child of Chinese and American parents who spent her first formative years in India before growing up in Connecticut and moving to California, I can identify with Ondaatje’s sense of forever switching back and forth between the roles of prodigal and foreigner.
Before embracing Ondaatje, I was a huge fan of Wallace Stegner, whose Angle of Repose served as my touchstone while I was writing my novel Cloud Mountain. Both books are about star-crossed lovers who travel great distances geographically and historically and struggle to overcome the cultural differences between them. I loved the way Stegner integrated letters and journal entries and framed scenes within very specific physical settings. Each of his novels is a master class in dramatic relationship building. My favorite now is Crossing to Safety. When I first began writing fiction, my favorite author was Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany’s slayed me as a young woman in love with New York City and Audrey Hepburn. But I also adored his essays and his very first books, such as The Grass Harp. At the same age I also was a huge fan of Carson McCullers, especially Ballad of the Sad Café and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Something about the sad, lovely, lonely people in southern novels just captivated me.
Author Interview - Aimee Liu
Favorite place to read a book: I spend hours each week listening to audiobooks as I walk around my neighborhood. I love the fusion of story and place that occurs in the process. For instance, my memory of Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins is framed in images of Venice Beach, where I listened to most of it. Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins is interlaced in my mind with the hills in Mar Vista that I trudged while struggling to keep track of her leaps and bounds in time and sorrow and narrative invention.
I do most of my reading with physical books in the last half hour before falling asleep. This piecemeal approach is not really fair to the books I’m reading, but I do love the comfort of curling up in bed with a book.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: I would love to meet Holly Golightly and hear about her wild childhood and equally wild nightlife in Manhattan. We’d be able to swap a few stories, since I had some pretty wild nights myself as a young model in Manhattan. But that was long ago for both of us. I’d also like to find out if she really did go off to Borneo or Africa…
Author Interview - Aimee Liu
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: I did an independent study project on Anais Nin in high school. A Spy in the House of Love was a favorite (and still one of the all-time great titles). That was when I realized that it was possible to write one’s innermost thoughts and struggles and share them with the world. Like many young women, I was mesmerized by Nin’s audacity and literary sexuality.
In college, I became a painter, and literature stepped aside, but within weeks of graduation I completely lost my mojo as a visual artist. There was a day when I sat in my studio staring at the empty canvas and feeling nothing but dread, and that was probably the day I knew I wanted to write books instead. Four years later I published my first book, Solitaire.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Both audiobooks and hardcovers, though most of the books I read are paperbacks. I love the experience of listening to an audiobooks, but I love the physical heft and beauty of a hardcover. I often read both versions in tandem, since it’s difficult to savor and return to passages when listening to a story. I am not a fan of ebooks at all, except for the convenience when traveling.
The last book I read: I finished two the same day (one audio, the other hardcover). I listened to Paul Kalanithi’s heartbreaking memoir When Breath Becomes Air, and I read Ocean Vuong’s equally wrenching novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The struggles, losses, and soaring power of love and art in both these books served as a strange balm in the middle of this pandemic. We can face horrors beyond our imagination, they both seemed to say, and not all of us will survive, yet each and every one of our lives is rich and significant and valuable. The secret is to fully own and share the beauty of our lives.
Author Interview - Aimee Liu
Pen & paper or computer: Computer. I’m a terrible typist. Never learned to touch type, though I took several classes in high school. In my early 20s I nearly lost my right hand in an accident that left me with permanent nerve damage in my fingertips. This also doesn’t help my typing, but it’s even harder for me to write longhand – especially now that arthritis has set in! So I just stare at the keyboard and keep pecking away.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: I would love to meet Hana from The English Patient. She’s the sort of calm, brave, generous person I try and fail to be. Undaunted, yet kind. I don’t think I could ever have tended the English patient or lived among those three men in that strange isolation. I don’t think I’d have an iota of her courage as a WWII nurse. But I could identify with her love affair, her confusion over the race barrier that hung over them. She seemed both grounded within herself and unmoored in every other respect. I do feel like that often, and I’d love to talk with her about those feelings.
Author Interview - Aimee Liu
If I wasn’t an author, I’d be a: Photographer. The mistake I made as a painter was shifting from realism to abstraction. I need the play of light and form to guide me as a visual artist, and I am a sucker for great photography. The protagonist in my first novel, Face¸ was a young photographer, and so are two characters in Glorious Boy. Research for these books has allowed me to learn a little about the tricks of the darkroom, and though I’m far from a pro, I’ve become quite addicted to creating art photographs with all the tools on Instagram. I try to post an image every day on Instagram @aimeeeliu and lately I’ve begun captioning each one with a single word to link the image to the experience of the pandemic, what we’re all feeling together right now. Ironically, almost all my images are painterly abstractions, but they also all are photographs of real objects.
Favorite decade in fashion history: I envy the glamour of the 30’s just before the war, when some people were feeling flush again and Hollywood was trying very hard to create the illusion that everyone was flush again. All those slinky gowns and draped necklines, and maybe some people actually had places to wear them!
Place I’d most like to travel: I’d love to rent a houseboat in Srinagar, Kashmir, for a month if that beautiful place ever returns to peace. My family visited Kashmir when I was a very little girl, and I have lots of sense memories of it. Then I fell in love with the place through Rumer Godden’s memoir A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep. She spent WWII in Kashmir, and at that time it was a refuge from fighting. I’d dearly love to go back, but I fear it will be in ruins before the war there now ever ends.
My signature drink: Pamplemousse! Aperol, St. Germain, Hendrick’s Gin, and the juice of a whole lemon over lots of ice. It tastes and looks just like pink grapefruit! I discovered this drink after a 1pm showing of Jojo Rabbit. In my opinion, that’s the best film of 2019 and maybe ever. But the juxtaposition of dread, joy, love, loathing, brutality, and wrenching, overwhelming loss left me a complete wreck coming out of the theater. I desperately needed a drink, so my husband steered me down to the street to a bar where Pamplemousse was the special cocktail of the day. Voila! I was revived.
Favorite artist: I have many beloved artists, including Vermeer and Vuillard, but I think Edward Hopper has to be my favorite. The light in his work devastates me, especially because it plays such a powerful narrative role in shaping the emotional impact of each work. Even when there are no figures in his paintings, the feeling vibrates within the light. In some of my Instagram art I’ve been playing with a similar process, so I’ve learned a lot from Hopper.
Number one on my bucket list: I don’t actually have a bucket list. Maybe I should, but I prefer to take each day as it comes and not worry about what I might miss. There’s something about a bucket list that strikes me as sad and anxious. There’s a lot I’d like to help fix or improve in this world before I leave it, but I can’t think of anything new that I want or need to experience in order to feel “completed.”
Anything else you'd like to add: Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about new books, Ashley! Especially right now, your enthusiasm and support are vital to the whole literary community. Also, your questions are wonderful!
Find more from the author:
Twitter: @aimee_liu
Instagram: @aimeeeliu
FaceBook: @AimeeLiuBooks
Website: www.aimeeliu.net
Author Bio: Aimee Liu is the author of Glorious Boy (May 2020), as well as the bestselling novels Flash House, Cloud Mountain, and Face, and the memoirs Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders and Solitaire. She is the editor of Alchemy of the Word: Writers Talk About Writing, and Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives: Guidance and Reflections on Recovery from Eating Disorders. Her articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Ms., Cosmopolitan, Self, Glamour, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications. Her novels include a Literary Guild Super Release and have been published in more than twelve languages and serialized in Good Housekeeping. She teaches in Goddard College’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Port Townsend, WA.
Author Interview - Aimee Liu
